Celebration

It’s been a while since I last had a really big birthday party, so I thought… No, just kidding! But I did have strawberry cake for lunch today, and so did a lot of other people. The “birthday child” though was our Town. It celebrated its 389th birthday. What? Never heard of celebrating a 389th birthday before? Well, now you have. You might prefer to call it anniversary rather than birthday, but still – how many 389th anything have you been to??

Today was the hottest day of summer so far. And usually I would not have said that my favourite place to be at noon on a hot summer day is in a crowd of people in the town square. Since I became a blogger, though, I find myself doing many strange things! 

And, in case you wonder – that really was a delicious cake!

Fountain

The fountain in the square in front of our Town Hall is from 1941 by artist Nils Sjögren.
The reliefs surrounding the fountain show working life through the history of the town.

I see now that besides the fountain, I caught something in the picture above which I was not aware of at the time. Do you see it? Don’t worry. It’s not a man about to jump off the roof. It’s just another statue… I’ll get back to that one another day!

Photo taken from the stairs of the Town Hall looking across the square.
This day was also Military Music Day, and all the people are waiting around for a parade.
More pictures of that coming up some other day.

Useful Sculptures

Surround by Richard Nonas

This photo was taken on a Sunday afternoon after all the shops in the city had closed. Normally on a sunny summer day there will often be people using these stone chairs as seats. Unlike some of our other recent sculptures, these ones were made for it…!

Standing in the square in front of our Town Hall, still used as court house, this circle of stone chairs reminds of ancient meeting places for assemblies - ‘t(h)ings’ - discussing matters of importance, and keeping up law and order. Ancient circles of standing stones were traditionally believed to be used for gatherings such as these. Those were/are called “rings of judges”.

A 'thing' or 'ting' (Old Norse, Old English and Icelandic: þing; other modern Scandinavian languages: ting) was the governing assembly in Germanic and some Celtic societies, made up of the free people of the community and presided by lawspeakers, meeting in a place called a thingstead. One task for the ‘ting’ was to hear witnesses to rule whether the accused was guilty or not. Today the term still lives on in the official names of national legislatures and political and judicial institutions in the Nordic countries.  (Wikipedia)

(I will be showing close-up photos of the fountain some other day.)

Town Hall

The Town Hall was built in 1910, and celebrated its centenary this weekend. The picture above shows the view from the Square, with an old-fashioned telephone booth in the foreground.

More pictures from the Town Hall can be seen in today's blog post at The Island of the Voices.




The Town Hall still serves as District Court House.
The decorations over this door include the Sword of Justice and the Statute-Book.



The City Arms and a stylized Town Silhouette in a stained glass window above the front door.
,